Walk the driving range and you will see the overwhelming majority of players working with one club in particular, the driver. Instead of just beating balls hoping to find the secret to hitting it longer and straighter, use these challenges to gamify your practice. Experiment with different feels and thoughts and if you can succeed at all of these challenges you will be losing far less golf balls and waiting longer and longer to hit your second shot as you drive past your fellow players.
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Max Out- The simple truth about adding distance is that for 90% of golfers clubhead speed is not the main reason you are losing distance, however if you swing the club faster your swing becomes more efficient and therefore overall better. So this challenge is as simple as it gets, when you are working on driver at the range give yourself 3-6 shots where you swing as hard as you possibly can. Don’t make it pretty, don’t care where the ball goes, don’t even care if you hit the ball. Your sole purpose with this swing is to MAX OUT CLUBHEAD SPEED, nothing else matters. This simple focus gets your body comfortable swinging at higher speeds. If you normally swing at 95mph, 98 mph feels out of control fast. If when you max out you can swing it at 100+MPH all of a sudden 98mph is not nearly as crazy of a feeling.
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10 Club Fairway Finder - Your on the 18th hole with a chance to break your personal best and you know that you need to hit the fairway, it doesn’t need to go far just straight, what’s the longest club you know will find that fairway? That’s what this drill finds. Create a narrow fairway on the driving range by holding up 3 fingers in front of your face and closing one eye. The edges of those three fingers are your fairway (it’s roughly 30yds). Start with a 9 iron, if the ball lands in the fairway then go up to 8 iron, continue doing this all the way up through your bag until you miss a fairway. That will give you a really good idea of what your guaranteed fairway finder club is. For most players it is a far shorter iron than they expect, keep working to try and get up to hybrids or woods.
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Start Line Window Breaker- This challenge does require two alignment sticks, but it is really beneficial for both alignment and for creating a consistent shot off the tee. Take two alignment sticks and stick them in the ground about two paces in front of the tee. Start with about 3ft of space between the sticks and continually narrow it as you hit shots through the alignment sticks, the best players can do this with just a few inches between the sticks. When you first try this challenge don’t worry where the ball lands, but as you get comfortable with this challenge attempt to hit the ball through the gates and hit the fairway. This combination works on both getting the ball started on line and minimizing left or right spin.
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Driver Gate Drill- This is the challenge EVERY SINGLE GOLFER should be doing, it is the number one mistake I see amateurs make when hitting the driver. Setup a gate using two tees that is just slightly wider than the clubface and attempt to hit a tee’d up ball from the middle of the gate without hitting either of the tees on the outside. Off center strikes with a driver are the biggest factor in lost distance and also add a ton of side spin to your shot. It’s one of the strongest correlations to handicap is how consistently you hit the center of the club, so to improve your driver make sure you are hitting the middle of the face. If you don’t want to setup tees grab a bottle of foot powder spray and spray it on the clubface, this will show you exactly where you are hitting the ball on the clubface. If you are struggling with this drill the key is to exaggerate the feeling you need. If you are consistently missing on one side of the clubface instead of trying to feel like you are changing the club a few centimeters try to feel like you are moving its to the other extreme side of the clubface. If you hit it off the heel try to hit it off the extreme toe side of the club.
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Clubface Ladder- The most fun challenge I have found for any ball striking skill is the clubface ladder drill. It’s simple and frustrating which is such a fantastic combination for learning. Pick a target on the range and align yourself square to that target. Then try to hit the ball as far left or right of that target as possible without changing that alignment, repeat this but the next show must be closer to the target than the previous shot. Continue like this until a shot either lands further away from the target than the previous shot or lands on the opposite side of the target you selected. Repeat process on the opposite side of the target. If you can successfully complete 5 or 6 shots on both sides you are building complete control over your ball. We always prefer control over consistency.